Lando Norris says the significant benefits delivered by McLaren’s upgrades since the beginning of the summer have come as “a bit of a relief” not only to himself but to the whole team.
McLaren team boss Andrea Stella acknowledged ahead of the start of the 2023 F1 season that the Woking-based outfit’s launch-spec MCL60 was well short of the outfit’s development goals, a fact confirmed by the car’s subdued performance in pre-season testing.
Norris was subsequently critical early on of the car’s efficiency, highlighting its lack of downforce. McLaren scored points in only three of the season’s first eight races.
However, team papaya enjoyed a gradual turnaround from Austria in early July when McLaren introduced the first upgrades resulting from a multi-stage development program concocted by Stella.
The team switched into catch-up mode and made up much of the ground it had lost on its rivals even before the start of the season and which led to wholesale changes to its engineering department with Stella implementing a complete new management structure.
- Read also: Norris hails ‘most exciting phase’ ahead for McLaren
For Norris, and for the entire McLaren team, the MCL60’s significant step forward and the strong results it has delivered led to an easing of anxiety.
“I guess there’s always a bit of relief, just going from any difficult situation to having such a big change around,” said the Briton, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“Even if we took half the step we did take, I think we still would have seen that as a positive sign. But the step was even bigger than we were expecting. So, of course, it’s a relief, but not just for myself, I think for the whole team.
“We kind of took quite a big step back over the winter to reassess everything that we’re doing, and the route we’re taking and that’s why we were quite delayed with putting the upgrades that we’ve had in place and onto the car.
“But we took our time and we had to stay patient.”
Last year, Norris – one of the sport’s brightest talents – committed to extending his contract with McLaren until the end of 2025.
The team’s relatively bleak prospects at the start of 2023 could have instilled a sense of regret in the 23-year-old’s mind. But that wasn’t the case Norris insists.
“There are frustrating times and just difficult times, but at no point did I think: ‘This is not where I want to be,'” he said.
“Of course, there are times when I wished we had a more competitive car and I wished that we could have started the year in a smoother way.
“It doesn’t give you a lot of hope in beginning of the year when you struggle as much as what we did.
“But I’m still always very happy to be with the team that I’m with, I still have a lot of faith that McLaren are able to achieve their goals and at the same time achieve my goals, which is to win races and to win championships with them.
“And when you have upgrades and situations like this, then of course there’s relief. These are very positive signs that we can jump ahead of Aston, jump ahead of Ferrari, fight against Mercedes and not be far off a Red Bull from one upgrade.”
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